A Difficult Young Man (11 page)

It cannot be too strongly emphasized that Helena was the star turn of our generation, for her looks, her candid good-humour, her courage and a kind of lively nobility that possessed her, and also she was the only daughter of our richest uncle, who idolized her. She and Dominic were our ‘bosses,' but when Helena directed us, we obeyed because we wanted to, not as so often happened with Dominic, because were afraid to do otherwise. And yet I cannot remember an instance of his physically hurting any of us.

As the Dells used the phrase ‘worshipping Helena'
it must have happened more than once. And this, whether I was told or whether I saw it, is I believe the form it took. Helena sat on the narrow form in the girls' bathing hut. She was without the top half of her bathing dress and Dominic knelt before her, his head bowed on her knees. He was in fact worshipping her with chivalrous reverence, blended with that poetic response to the natural world, which had made him walk naked in the moonlight at Rathain, or float in the sea below the Red Bluff. It was eccentric, but so far innocent.

Uncle Bertie, distrusting Steven's business capacity, kept an eye on the division of the spoils. He wanted to make sure that Maysie had her share, but beyond that he was enough disinterested to see that nothing was wasted which would be of benefit to the family as a whole. Beaumanoir was only rented, and on an afternoon two days after Dominic's excursion to Mordialloc, he said to Steven:

‘Mrs Langton put up those bathing sheds under the pine trees, didn't she? If so, they're part of her estate and should be sold.'

‘Oh, they're only worth a few pounds,' said Steven, who foresaw far more than a few pounds' worth of trouble in finding a builder to buy them, and a lorry to cart them away.

‘If they're only worth ten pounds,' said Bertie, ‘that would be two pounds for each of you. I don't know if any of you can afford to throw away two pounds,
I can't.' He was now becoming so rich that he could afford to boast of his poverty. ‘We'd better go and look at them.'

They strolled down the garden towards the sea. When they came under the shadow of the pine trees, Uncle Bertie pulled open the door of the nearest hut, and disclosed Dominic ‘worshipping Helena.' Dominic turned and stared at him. His eyes were dark and confused, like those of someone half awake, or under the influence of a drug.

We made fun of Uncle Bertie, simply because he made money, which none of us could do. We associated him with Baba as ‘bourgeois' as they both were serious about things which we ignored, but they were very different characters. Our attitude was very ungrateful, as his financial advice given free to the family for over thirty years probably kept them from destitution. I may have suggested that he was vulgar. If so it is time that I put the glaze of adult knowledge over the crude colours of my childish picture. This theory of the adult glaze seems to contradict the importance I have given to the spiritual perception of children. But the latter can only be used to see another person's mood or nature, not to understand the intention of his actions.

On this occasion, which after all demanded a good deal of
savoir faire
,
Uncle Bertie behaved perfectly. When he had recovered from his outraged astonishment he quietly told Helena to dress herself and join
him at the house. Then he said to Steven:

‘I think this is for you to deal with.'

Dominic went off to the boys' hut, to dress to receive his sentence. If he had been doing something which he acknowledged to himself was wrong, he would have been braced to meet the risk of discovery, but he had been in a state of exaltation, and he was dazed to find himself again a criminal. In a moment he had been plunged from the highest to the most abject feelings of which he was capable.

Steven did not know what to do. He thought Dominic's conduct outrageous and that it should be punished. It was far worse to him than the incident of Baba's maids, as in these matters he accepted the convention of his generation. He hated mentioning anything to do with sex to the younger generation. We were never taken aside and told with ‘reverence' and illustrations from flowers, of the facts of life, which as it happened we already knew from our observations on the farm, supplemented by laconic instruction from the stable boy. The neglect did not appear to harm us, as Dominic, whatever he did, had a most lofty mind, and was furious at any kind of smut, and we were saved from the embarrassment of an almost incestuous conversation with our parents.

Again, if Steven decided to punish Dominic what could he do? He could not beat him, and even if Dominic had submitted to such a punishment, the thought of the scene was so squalid and disgusting to
Steven that he could not contemplate it. Squalid was the word he used to describe anything from which reason and human dignity were absent. He could not send him again to a farm where everyone would expect him to seduce the maids and ill-treat the horses. He could not send him to a reformatory, not only because obviously one did not do that to one's own children but most of all because he was not certain what it was about Dominic that needed reforming. His code of gentlemanly conduct told him that what he had seen was shocking, and yet, and Steven was incidentally an artist, he had a half-conscious feeling that it was innocent and even beautiful.

He went miserably into the house to discuss it with Laura, and so great was his distaste for prying into the sex-life of the young, if they had any, that he could only very sketchily indicate to her what he had seen, so that at first she had the impression that ‘the worst' had happened. When she realized Dominic's lesser offence, to Steven's surprise she blamed Helena, and said that it was obviously started by her to gratify her vanity, and a thing no boy would think of.

‘Everybody blames Dominic for whatever happens,' she said indignantly. ‘They expect him to provide them with shocks for their amusement. What sensitive boy can do the right thing with everyone watching for him to do wrong? Why do they interfere? If Baba and Wolfie and the rest of them hadn't gone up to Westhill, Tamburlaine would be alive now, Dominic wouldn't
be here and this wouldn't have happened. If they didn't talk so much about him, no one would have thought anything of his going to Mordialloc for the day. Now there's this business with Helena. If they say any more about it, I shall put the whole blame on to her. I shall ring up Bertie now and tell him.'

Laura's defence of Dominic was not only due to the concern a mother has for a child who finds life difficult, but also to a feeling of a more personal responsibility towards him, than to Brian or myself. She believed that she had transmitted to him, though not suffering from them herself, those characteristics which caused his darkened emotions. Because he appeared solely the offspring of her family, she felt an obligation to defend her own kind against the derision of the Langtons.

‘Well, perhaps a little blackmail is justified,' said Steven.

‘I think it is,' said Laura.

‘But that doesn't settle what we're to do about Dominic. He can't stay at Westhill for ever doing nothing, and I'm not going to give him another horse—not for a long time. There are some things he's
got
to learn. I don't know what else he can do.'

‘He might become a clergyman,' Laura suggested.

‘A clergyman! You're not serious,' said Steven crossly. ‘And after today's performance!'

‘He's interested in religion. It might steady him down.'

‘You can't wreck the Church, just to steady Dominic. Anyhow, he'd never pass his examinations.'

‘No, I suppose not. Well, there's the army. We thought of that before.' Laura in considering a profession for Dominic did not look beyond the horizons of her family, and in this she was quite right, as they had impressed their limitations so strongly upon him that it was only in one of their traditional occupations that he had any hope of surviving, let alone succeeding.

‘We can't send him alone to England,' said Steven. ‘It would be disastrous.'

Laura did not speak for a moment. She evidently had something on her mind. Then she said tentatively:

‘Couldn't we all go? What about Waterpark? Shall we have enough money to live there?'

‘I don't want to live in England,' said Steven. ‘It's so infernally cold. But I suppose something will have to be done about Waterpark. It's a devil of a nuisance inheriting things.'

‘I believe that Dominic would be happier in England. He's more an English type.'

‘English!' exclaimed Steven. ‘He's pure Mediterranean. He might make a good toreador.'

Laura really meant that Dominic was more European than Australian in his make-up, and in this she was right. They said no more for some time about going to England, but the idea was blown into their minds by the explosion of that afternoon. They sent
Dominic back to Westhill the same night, as a gesture to placate the family, but it was no punishment as we were all leaving two days later.

One feels that a phase of one's life should end dramatically or with some moving expression of farewell. Beaumanoir had been the background of all our childhood, but that fizzled out in dreariness and slight discord. The Craigs did not come again. The Dell children came in the afternoon, in an aura of moral superiority owing to the new smudge on Dominic's reputation. The next morning the last furniture was being carried down from the servants' bedrooms to the auctioneer's vans. After a nasty picnic lunch of tinned food, we set out in cabs for the station. At the last minute Laura said she did not think the pantry window was locked, and sent me back to look. Then we drove away.

The house was bought by a rich evangelical tea and coffee merchant. Beneath the neo-Elizabethan plasterwork of the dining-room, where Austin had driven Sarah from the table with his improprieties, where the Sunday luncheons on the slightest provocation had sparkled with champagne and malice, where Alice's mind, when it all seemed too noisy for her tired nerves, had wandered to the ilex trees on the Pincio, Mr Keating held revivalist meetings. He had no children, and apart from these weekly outbursts of sacred song, the house and the gardens were silent. It is improbable that he used the bathing huts.

CHAPTER VII

WHEN WE
returned to Westhill, we had an unsettled feeling. We boys knew that our parents were much better off, and expected our style of living suddenly to be transformed into that of Beaumanoir. But it was not in Steven's nature to splash out into extravagance within a few weeks of his mother's death. We kept asking when we were going to have a motor-car, but he only replied that he did not want a ‘benzine buggy.'

We were actually less comfortable than we had been before. The furniture and pictures which were heirlooms had arrived from Beaumanoir and the house was too crowded. One bumped into unexpected tables and chests in the passages. Also Cousin Sarah was staying with us until it was decided where she was to live. But as usual the chief occasion and centre
of discontent was Dominic. He had no horse, and at Westhill for a large part of the day we lived on horses. Brian and I had our usual ponies, but Dominic had to ride a rather slow and heavy horse called Punch, which was often driven in the tea-cart. Not only was he, so proud, humiliated by having a less suitable mount than his younger brothers, but whenever he rode Punch he was reminded, and was reminding everyone who saw him, that he had killed Tamburlaine.

One day we were going on a picnic to Cardinia Creek. Steven, Laura and Sarah were to drive in the tea-cart, so that Dominic would not have Punch, but an even more humiliating mount called Bendigo, as it came from that town. We would pass through Harkaway and Berwick, and see many people we knew. Shortly before we set out Dominic came to Laura, and said dolefully:

‘Mum, I can't ride Bendigo.'

‘What will you do then, dear?' she asked.

‘I'll drive with you.'

So he sat in the back of the tea-cart with Sarah, also a creature like himself slightly outside the pale, and appeared to be accepting as a mortification the humiliation that had come upon him. At the picnic he was humble and helpful. Steven could not stand it. That night he said to Laura:

‘I'm not going to drive about with Dominic. I might as well spend the day at a funeral.'

‘Couldn't he be given another horse?' asked Laura.
‘I know he feels very much what he has done. All the time he has to ride Punch, or drive with us he's reminded of it.'

‘And we're reminded of it too,' grumbled Steven. ‘If one has to punish Dominic it means punishing ourselves and the whole family as well. But I'm not going to give in on this point, even if we live in black misery for a year. You can't let a boy kill a horse and give him another in a few weeks' time. It would be criminal.'

Our extra wealth and share of the spoils had not made us much happier. This was not only due to the cluttered house, the presence of Sarah, and Dominic's walking round like the embodiment of guilt in a miracle play. Our life had lost its focus with the death of Alice, and the dispersal from Beaumanior. We were now confined to Westhill, without the family club and crêche on which to descend whenever we felt the need for more interesting food and society.

Steven began to realize the truth of his remark about the nuisance of inheritance. It was more comfortable to have a small, regular and safe allowance from one's parents, than a much larger income subject to wider claims, which involved the responsibility of investment and financial adjustment. Now that there was no Beaumanoir for the Flugels and other cousins to frequent, he was afraid that as he had the largest share of Alice's money, though it was only a share, they might throng Westhill, and even expect him to advance the loans and
confer the other benefits they had been used to receive. He was naturally generous and would dislike to refuse, but he saw no reason to act as a charitable organization to people who could now, if they chose, live within their incomes. His fears about Westhill were justified, as they continued to treat it as a free holiday resort.

Since we left Beaumanoir there had been an open conspiracy to keep Helena and Dominic apart. One day Aunt Maysie and her two boys arrived in their motor-car, an invention which made us more vulnerable to these invasions. She was usually sensible, but on this occasion she was flustered, and explained no less than four times that Helena had gone to play tennis with the Godfreys. Normally she might simply have said: ‘Helena couldn't come,' or not have bothered to mention it at all. As none of them had been invited an apology was hardly necessary. This was only a slight instance of the many occasions when our parents had to suffer oblique references to Dominic, and his menacing nature. If Steven went into the Melbourne Club a man might say to him: ‘Hullo,
Langton. How's that boy of yours?' If there was a family gathering at which Helena would be present, Dominic was not allowed to go.

Another cause of Steven's discontent was the presence of Sarah in the house. While we lived at Westhill he could not very well turn her out, but, like Austin, he regarded her as the Jonah of our misfortunes. Without quite knowing why, he thought she was
bad for Dominic. If we left Westhill she would have to go to Cousin Hetty or to one of her Mayhew relatives, who were abundant.

About this time too Steven discovered that a neighbouring farmer had stolen a number of fencing posts, and that for some time he had been filching minor perquisites from Westhill. He did not like to prosecute him, because of the effect on the man's children. That he should be driven from his home by unwelcome visitors and thieving neighbours, suggests a certain weakness of character, but he expected people to behave in a civilized and considerate fashion, as he always did himself. When they failed, if he was unable to reform them, he preferred to avoid them.

Even so, it is most likely that he would have stayed where he was, and have dealt with these annoyances, if it had not been for Dominic, whose copybook was now completely blotted. The ink had spread over the whole page. He began every day with the fact of Dominic, smouldering, gentle, or difficult at the breakfast table, having apparently exhausted every possibility of a career in the continent of Australia. It was this that made him and Laura revert to the conversation they had on that afternoon at Beaumanoir and finally decided: ‘We had better go home.' Home had moved again, ten thousand miles away, to Waterpark.

So Dominic, as he was apt to do, affected the lives of a large number of people. Owing to him Brian was taken away at the worst possible age from the
Melbourne Grammar School where he was happy and successful, though at the urgent request of the headmaster he was allowed to stay on until the end of the year, and did not sail with us. Owing to him I had to leave my school at Kew, so admirably suited to my temperament, and I have had to live, split between two hemispheres, in that double world which is a theme of this book. Owing to him Sarah had to spend her last days with her intimidating sister, Cousin Hetty, who thought her a fool, while she, not without justification, thought Cousin Hetty a whore. And yet like so many of Dominic's effects, they were not ultimately bad. If I had not been partly Europeanized my imagination would have been greatly impoverished, and the education I did have was best suited to my nature. We all benefited by those few years at Waterpark. They clarified Steven's attitude to his family seat, and if he had never returned there, he would always have had an uneasy conscience. So we may be grateful to Dominic that one afternoon Steven, walking down Collins Street, met Aunt Baba in a ‘striking rig-out' as he called it, made possible by Alice's death, for which she had already come out of mourning as she thought any sign of family feeling was not ‘smart,' and that she said to him, with an insolence as new as her financial security and her hat: ‘Is Dominic
still
loafing up at Westhill? Why don't you send him to a station in Queensland, or somewhere at a distance?' At this jibe, he went straight on to the shipping office and returned to Westhill with a sailing-list, which he discussed with Laura
that evening.

But it is possible that he decided to do this a few days earlier, and that Aunt Baba's remark only confirmed his decision. On that day I was crossing the yard to the stables when Steven, carrying sketching things, came out of the studio he had built there. He said he was going to finish a painting he had begun the day before, looking across the valley to Harkaway.

‘May I come too?' I asked, and his face lighted with pleasure, as it always did when we shared his activities. I fetched a block and some water colours, and talking cheerfully together we set off down the hill past the orchard, to the spot from where he had begun his sketch. Tamburlaine had been buried at the bottom of the orchard, and there was a mound of red earth there on which the grass had not yet grown. The place is still indicated, but now by a depression in the turf. When we passed this place, we saw Dominic standing there, looking down at the grave, and I thought from a kind of hang-dog despair in his attitude, although he was fifty yards away, that he must be looking as he did when he watched the dying fly. He saw us but did not say anything, and he moved away from the grave, bending down and pretending to pick up apples.

I could feel the effect on my father of the sight of Dominic standing there. He stopped talking, and when I spoke to him gave absent-minded and monosyllabic replies. When we came to the place for him to sketch,
he arranged his things and began to paint, but very soon he said: ‘The light is different today. I shall have to come another time,' and he packed up again. It may have been then that he decided to return to England, and his interest in the Australian countryside, suddenly with his decision, went flat, and he no longer had the impulse to paint it. Whether it was then, or when he met Aunt Baba does not alter the fact that it was in a way the force behind Dominic's emotions that drove us out of Australia. My father may also have been disturbed by the memory that Bobby had gathered apples in that orchard on the morning of his death, and have had a feeling that Westhill was unlucky for us.

As a family we were rather like a man with two banking accounts, who, when one is overdrawn to its limit, uses the other and allows his first account to lie fallow until it has recovered its credit. When they left Waterpark in 1892 there was a vague feeling that they had disgraced themselves, possibly through some eccentricity of Austin's, or it may only have been because they had lost money and could not implement Dolly Potts's marriage settlement. They were much too sensitive, ignoring public opinion and yet disliking criticism, which was unusually irrational of them. Any Langton might lie awake at night, suffused with shame at a gauche remark he had made forty years ago to a woman long since dead, though every day he might hear bricks dropped by others, of which the echoes
faded in a few hours.

So now the Chippendale chairs and walnut chests, into which we had bumped in the passages of Westhill, and the eighteenth-century velvet and bewigged ancestors, taken down from the walls where they had only hung for a few weeks, were confined to the hold of a ship, to grace once more the house for which they were originally intended. The duque de Teba was not sent with them, as he was a Byngham possession, and Laura thought it more fair that he should go to one of her brothers. Sarah as we have seen, always thought it disgraceful to have the portrait of such a wicked relative hanging in the house, and said:

‘If you had a cousin in prison for stealing you wouldn't have his photograph on the mantelpiece.'

‘If I liked him, I would,' said Steven.

Since the night when Dominic had come in, leaving Tamburlaine dead in the drive, and had stood underneath that portrait, Sarah had not merely disapproved of it, but had loathed it. She formed the superstitious belief that it had an influence on him, and that there was some kind of Dorian Gray connection between him and the picture. She read that book with avidity, keeping it in a brown paper cover beneath her underclothes in her chest-of-drawers. One day passing the drawing-room window I looked in to see if it was tea time, and saw instead Cousin Sarah standing before the portrait of the duke, and viciously poking out her tongue at it.

When we sailed for England, she stayed on at
Westhill to supervise the final tidying up and letting of the house. She waited until our ship had left Fremantle, before her attack on the portrait, burning and blistering the face beyond recognition. This was more than an attempt to save Dominic from his
damnosa hereditas
.
After a life spent in a rich and lively household, of which her savage disapproval gave her unfailing satisfaction, and surrounded all the time by children and growing life, she was suddenly left discarded in the empty house, like the inferior furniture, not good enough to be taken to England. Her destruction of the picture was a gesture of repudiation of the worldly, who made use of the humble and meek for their convenience and pleasure.

If Sarah expected the Dorian Gray connection between Dominic and the portrait to work at the moment of destruction, by some visible change in him, an immediate serenity of his brow, or clearness in his eye which showed his freedom from the curse, she was disappointed, as he remained exactly the same, which may have been a good thing, as it is possible that the magic would have worked the other way, and that the duke's wickedness would suddenly have been stamped on Dominic's adolescent face as he sat at breakfast in the P. & O. liner, to the terror of his fellow-passengers who would imagine that the devil was eating fried eggs. Incidentally it was the beautiful eighteenth-century frame of this picture which I used for the terrible crucifixion which Dominic, before his
death, painted on the wall of the chapel at Westhill. It was, in a way, the most appropriate use that could be made of it.

To go back a little to the day we sailed. In a not very clear way Steven was respected as the head of the family, and Waterpark spoken of with veneration, especially by those who had never been there. Now that Steven was going to occupy his ancestral seat, his importance was enhanced, and practically the whole clan, as well as many friends, came to see us off.